Power of Good Mentorship

I've been re-watching episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine lately. In an episode in season 2, Shadowplay, Commander Sisko is talking to his son Jake about future possible plans to join Starfleet. He encourages his son to start training (sort of an internship) under Chief O'Brien.

To me it seems like the kind of opportunity only fostered in a futuristic sci-fi TV show. But in reality, I bet a lot of engineers had similar mentors in their lives. Sysko confesses his son is in the bottom third of mechanical aptitude and O'Brien admits he was as well. That he didn't realize his engineering skills until he was on the front and had to make a critical repair.

In a way it's oddly comforting. I'm not one of those "born an engineer" types though I love it now. I do wonder how many young, aspiring engineers had a Chief O'Brien in their lives. Someone who was an engineer for a living and gave them a pretty good idea of what it was. Or maybe someone who worked in a similar trade. Maybe they taught them a few things and gave them a leg up or a taste of what they might want to do.

Given how many medical dramas there are and how few science or engineering shows, I wonder how many got into the field because of someone they knew growing up or fell into it later and were surprised to learn what it was all about?

Future of Engineers

Tom Gillis writes a post on his blog on Forbes today called The End of the Engineer. It's sort of like reverse STEM recruiting we typically see everywhere else. Which would be refreshing if it wasn't so ignorant. He first posits that post industrial revolution the need for better machines and manufacturing has been outsourced (not going to argue manufacturing has been outsourced). Then he talks about how the slight differences in performance that engineers generally strive for are no longer as crucial. He cites Apple as moving away from the engineering model towards one of marketing and customer understanding. Saying instead that that is what makes Apple successful.

 

He may be right that incremental improvements no longer please consumers. But I think that's always been the case. I think music industry people were surprised when MP3s gained such popularity. Their quality was a lot lower than CDs. However their portability and ease of use with a variety of devices was what had the mass appeal. And the same with cell phones and smart phones. We use them for convenience not because the sound quality is fantastic (anyone remember the old hear a pin drop Sprint commercials?) Now industry executives are surprised that the mainstream way to watch music videos is YouTube. Watch what you want when you want at your own convenience and for free. That's what consumers want rather than the high quality that executives might have assumed consumers would always be demanding. However, these incremental changes are still appreciated when your smartphone or your LCD TV gets slimmer or the next model of car gets a little lighter and a little better fuel economy.

 

So none of this means engineering is no longer crucial. He mentions the hoardes of engineering graduates from India and China. But for now, whether its societal or level of education, these high numbers have not meant Chinese and Indian companies are always able to compete with equal fervor with western companies. Part of Apple's success is certainly marketing based. But a lot of it is a core product that required a lot of fantastic engineering. And just because Chinese companies have no qualms about stealing IP and churning out cheaper products later doesn't mean they actually have the independent engineering knowledge to make another Apple. And as the sole commenter on his blog alludes to, not every American company that relies on engineering talent is a consumer electronics company.

 

True we're no longer innovating as much in agricultural machines, but we are in power generation plants, offshore drilling, mining applications, solar and wind energy, automotive design, aerospace, weapons, military technology and medical and biomedical breakthroughs. I think Mr. Gillis has really been sheltered too long in the bubble that is Silicon Valley. Apparently he is a VP at Cisco and his Forbes profile includes such excellent buzz words as "social networking", "new security paradigm", "leverage today's tools", "strategic" and he goes on to claim credit for making Cisco strong in the security market. I hope none of the engineers on his team who helped him position Cisco as a strong security leader read this article and realize their head honcho doesn't appreciate their technological contributions. For all his flattery of Steve Jobs and Apple one can only assume he's trying to get a job there. I hope Cisco recognizes this and lets him go so he can make his move. If I want marketing and social media BS I'll go talk about it on Twitter. If I want a company that makes reliable hardware and services because I know they have a good engineering core I will continue to go to companies like Cisco. When a VP doesn't see what's right beneath his nose he doesn't deserve the job.

 

Gillis goes on to recommend that people get Liberal Arts degrees and that he will give that advice to his own children. I sincerely hope he's kidding. As a highly paid executive I'm sure he'd have no problems placing his children with jobs after they get their Art History or Communications BA but he's not only living within the soft bubble of Silicon Valley then he's living within the privileged bubble of upper class if he thinks liberal arts degrees are a viable path to a solid middle class lifestyle. Engineering isn't as respected as it used to be (as evidenced by this article) but I wouldn't tell an intelligent young person who had strong math or science skills not to major in it any sooner than I'd suggest a broad liberal arts degree is a good path either. People should follow their passions certainly as success tends to be elusive no matter what path you take. But underestimating the need for some percentage of the population to be engineers is complete ignorance. Just because we aren't always putting these minds to the best use is a limitation of our policies and a focus on short term growth. If we were thinking Apollo Program big again we'd be able to achieve things way beyond what Gillis could imagine. And we'll need engineers to get us there.

Strength in Sisterhood

There's a discussion over at Corporette about networking with older women. It's a follow up to an older post where they talked about networking with an older man who'd previously acted in a way that I would call "skeevy". Now, Corporette seems mostly written to and commented by lawyers so the advice is not universal. But it is a really awesome community for professional women.

So the original writer wrote in about how to navigate what was both a friendship and a networking opportunity with a group of older women she was working with during an internship. The advice was good but it made me a little pouty and jealous and bitter (which is kind of typical for me anyways).

Yeah I know engineering isn't as gender balanced as law is (though neither has a fantastic track record). But I had to think hard about any older women at work. Forget there being a group. There are a few other women my age. I guess I'm just not outgoing enough to suggest we all grab drinks based on our double X chromosome alone (plus if that got out to the dudes, we'd all be lambasted as hairy legged feminist bitches and probably limit everyone's career). But I am upset that there aren't enough women there that something like that would happen naturally.

I had a female boss back when I worked in health care and since working there I had one female boss as well. But she wasn't much of a mentor. In fact the women I've been closest to there have been striving to get out. To make the money they needed to make so they could go spend their days on the beach. Spending days on the beach isn't my thing and it makes sense not every woman would have enough in common to chat. It's just annoying that there aren't enough women that I can find any other female engineers or higher level people that maybe a few of us do have something in common. Maybe some day.

Engineering Jobs by Discipline

I talked before about what states are hiring engineers and where all the engineering jobs are. Best estimate there are something like 44,000 engineering jobs open nationally right now. The census says that in 2008 84,000 people graduated with engineering degrees. Engineering shortage? I think not. Probably my 44,000 search was not broad enough to include the kinds of jobs engineering graduates might go into. But still, that's nowhere near a shortage, is it Corporate America?

So what kind of engineers are being hired right now? Software engineers.

Making up almost half of open jobs software engineers have it made. If we have a shortage of engineers, maybe it's that kind of engineer. The problem is we're recruiting people into a very diverse field without specifying what we really want or really need. I was curious how this stacked up to major choice and pulled a some numbers from a local university to give a breakdown:

You can tell mechanical and civil/structural majors are heavily overrepresented. People are probably going into these fields and finding the jobs aren't there. This is all magnified when certain geographic areas (Detroit vs Silicon Valley) have very different focuses even when colleges might be more diverse. Chemical and electrical engineering majors are a little closer to the national average of open jobs and software/computer engineering heavily underrepresented.

I'm a bit torn by including software engineers here. There's a big difference between "computer engineer" and a programmer. Many job openings ask for a degreed engineer when what they really need is a programmer. But if they're asking for an engineering degree that becomes a part of the requirement that job seekers have to meet even when it's unlike other engineering disciplines. Given the low numbers though it's possible those with other degrees, or no degrees at all, are filling the gap for these open software jobs. That is if anyone is even hiring.

Appendix A: Where are the engineering jobs?

Ask and ye shall receive! A full version of the list available for your ranking/competing pleasure. I only hope this means arguments about whether South Dakota is better than North Dakota (it's not) start erupting. Sorry for the jpg, while I am an excel pseudo-wizard my blogger skills are lacking.

Yes I know Washington DC isn't a "state" and I left out some exciting US territories. Sorry!

Where are the engineering jobs?

So who's hiring engineers? It's no surprise in raw numbers that the top five states with engineering jobs open* include some of the most populace states with large metro areas and of course the center of automotive engineering in the states.

But how does that compare to the population of those states? Washington DC tops the list at the most engineering jobs per capita. Illinois is still doing pretty good and though it's not the list Michigan pulls in at #6. As for bottom of the list Montana comes in last but no region is left alone here with southern states and northeast also represented. The big population states of California and Texas fell in the middle of the list.

*Total job openings per state were pulled from CareerBuilder as a basis of estimate. Total state populations pulled from Wikipedia.

Future Engineers

A couple of links for easy weekend reading.
A summer camp in San Jose teaching kids hands on civil engineering skills.
Will there some day be a 5-stroke petrol combustion engine that does better than a diesel engine?
Bob Gower CEO of United Memories gives a tour of the place that does chip testing for the semiconductor industry right in Colorado Springs before he retires. They gloss lightly over outsourcing, the quality of US engineers, and the worth of keeping jobs here.

Engineers good business people?

Apparently some engineer got booted off some British version of The Apprentice because the British Donald Trump (Lord Sugar?) doesn't think engineers are good at business. The engineer in question goes on to defend himself by citing other successful engineers such as: Bill Gates, James Dyson and Mark Zuckerberg.

 

Now first of all, I'm not sure a "programmer" is always an engineer. I have mad respect for Bill Gates but neither he nor Zuckerberg completed college. And both are largely known for their programming skills. Given the days of early computers Gates might have more street cred as an engineer since "programming" in its infancy was hardware driven. I'm not saying their both not successful and smart, just that I wouldn't necessarily lump them into an umbrella family of engineers for every single purpose. James Dyson, however, designed the best vacuum I ever used and appears to be like the Tony Stark of vacuum cleaners. Though I'm not entirely sure he has a degree in education that would make all three of them just general genius types. I mean two of them dropped out of Harvard. You gotta figure in many cases have you the advantages to get into Harvard you're already at a good spot (whether that's social upbringing advantages or just pure raw natural talent).

 

Second of all, this argument always makes me think of Tom Smykowski from the movie Office Space who defends his job by saying he's necessary because engineers aren't good with people. I know a great many liasons and systems analysts and project coordinators who it would seem have the same responsibility: go between from the technical to the customer (one could almost argue the highly paid Program Manager fulfills this role as well). It's not so much I think that engineers and technical folks are not good with people, but that their technical skills are valued in such a way that's how management wants them to spend 100% of their time. Versus you can hire somebody else to be the facilitator or communicator. But it does seem to be the trap that engineers and probably scientists fall into.

 

What do you think, does that hold technical people back? What about the other way, are liasons and communicators valued in the same way technical employees are?

Looking for trends in all the wrong places

I found the above graph here. It's not so important that it doesn't include the last five years or so for my purposes.

 

I was looking at MegaCorp's new hires and discovered that in the last three months of intense intern hiring (it's the season for interns!) 24% of them have been female. I wondered how this compared to engineers hired. Turns out in the first 5+ months of this year, 10% of our new hire engineers have been female.

 

Now, my local university says that about 18.5% of engineering degrees are conferred to women. So the intern numbers seem to be, if anything, on the high side.

 

Compare the new hire numbers to the historical chart at the top and you'd see that we'd have to be averaging 30 years of experience for the engineers we hire for 10% to be a reasonable number. It's unlikely our average new hire engineer is 50 years old or more.

 

What does this mean? Why is the effort being made on the intern level to bring in more women but we don't see it when it comes down to hiring full-timers? It's possible, I suppose, that women are graduating with degrees, and working internships, but then somehow not going into engineer at all. If they are going into completely different fields after getting an engineering degree, and in high numbers, that could explain it.

 

Or is it part of the general trend that women tend to work in lower paying occupations so it's easier for a woman to get hired on as an intern than it will be for her to get hired as an engineer. Or maybe HR is trying to push diversity but can only manage to do so as a part of its intern hiring program but can't convince managers to hire more experienced women.

 

This might make a lot of sense if both numbers were on the low side or on the high side. Then you could draw some conclusion about MegaCorp's particular industry or maybe locality differences. As it is it looks a little strange.

More on the superiority of engineering

Today on Engineer Blogs I talked about interdisciplinary engineering which is the theme over there this week. (See posts by Cherish, GEARS, and Paul Clarke as well). There's other engineering in the news today though, again from the NY Times Economix blog college majors that do best in this job market.

 

A month and a half ago I had a post on some economic news that included the mention of an article about engineering being the best paying college major. You'll notice some discrepancies. The CNNMoney article touting high salaries for engineers says they all had a higher starting salary than $60,000. However the Economix chart is based on earned income in the last 12 months so the median income for someone with an engineering degree employed in a job that requires that degree is...$35,548. Now probably some dinosaur engineers will show up and say that this was quite normal for them and kids these days are too demanding. Probably haven't read any of my numerous posts on inflation.

 

Hopefully the low number is due to people starting their job more recently than 12 months and only having a partial years earnings to report along with maybe some people who are working part time. Still, the percentage of engineering graduates who are employed in a job that requires their degree is 69.4%. That's the second highest after teaching at 71.1%. Higher than the oft praised "business" degree, health, or physical science (which will surprise no one in the sciences). Communications, humanities and "area studies" (whatever that it is) make up the bottom of the list. So while you shouldn't always hunt the money, hunting a degree that leads to more full employment might be useful. Though even the numbers of employed grads in the top fields are abysmally low. More victims of this brutal job market.

How to network without really trying

I went to a "technical talk" at another company in a related industry to mine last week. It was put on by the Society of Women Engineers and a local organization of Systems Engineers. I'll admit I had diverse motivations in attending this. The topic interested me, but honestly if I was 100% happy staying at MegaCorp I probably wouldn't have gone.

On the outside it looked much like my own company. Non-distinct white buildings with glass windows several stories high. Grass and other greenery around the perimeter, and the occasional benches and tables for employees taking their lunch. The lobby looked much like any lobby I've ever been in. Then I turn around and see a placard for Women's History Month. A variety of events were occurring, some with the company and some not. Let's just say that this sort of thing would not be tolerated at MegaCorp. Some dude would loudly ask when Dude History Month is and why we have all these "special" things for non-white dudes like himself. I mean, he never got an unfair hand up.

I was further surprised when I realized their women's bathroom had  "mother's room" attached. Or I am assuming, a lactation room or whatever you want to call it. I have no experience with motherhood but I probably signed something when I started at MegaCorp where I agreed not to lactate within five miles of any work buildings (see MIL-STD-JK). So all of this was pretty foreign to me.

But besides the obvious advantage we women had going into it, the actual talk was still overwhelmingly male from the local systems engineering group. There was one woman from that group, and two other women both members or officers in SWE. And all of the women there had jobs. There was another probably eight dudes, half of which were currently unemployed. And I couldn't help but wonder that their being unemployed was the only reason they were there.

They looked uncomfortable and awkward as you might expect from a guy without a job who showed up because he hopes he'll meet someone here where he can get a job. Some were "project engineers" (who blog readers will know I have no love for). All were easily over 40. Everyone there was white. I had to wonder as we all introduced ourselves and they heard all the women cite employers if the dudes watching were angrily thinking to themselves how easy it is for a woman to get a job and how difficult for them. And I wonder if there's not a difference there that's leading to this misconception.

I know several graduating female engineers who have job offers already, or at least some place to pay them for a while. I also know several still unemployed graduating male engineers. All the female engineers I know with early job offers worked internships. I'm not sure if this is because of a purely male/female thing; perhaps female engineers knew they would have to work harder to prove themselves and wanted "practical" experience. Perhaps the kind of woman who becomes an engineer is already more devoted to the field than the average undergraduate male. And when they all have job offers, but some percentage of the men do not, that can create a mis-perception that women have an easier time getting jobs.

And I wonder that maybe because of this, that women already in the field know they have to be ever vigilant and stay up to date in order to keep up with their male colleagues. That oftentimes they will be expected to work harder to be treated the same. Or in my case, feeling alienated at my own workplace I reached out to a woman's group just to meet people a little like myself and not feel so alone as a female engineer. So though we all had jobs, we were still there. But the guys clearly didn't need this support system until they were actually job hunting.

Just my observations. I'll wait for the barrage of guys who would like to write in and tell me how easy women have it in getting scholarships (I should know, I never got a single scholarship, as someone who worked full time and went to school part time the deck was stacked against me as well as most scholarships require full time status) or how easy women have in getting jobs (again despite having way more experience than my classmates my job hunting experience has been about average, or slightly below average when you consider I should be doing better). And all that is dangerously anecdotal. But I do think the way men and women treat networking is something interesting to consider, especially in a male dominated field like engineering.

Smog now in Technicolor!

One of the undergraduate environmental labs at my university uses colored dye, water and salt to simulate smoke plumes and pollution. In a tank of distilled water a mix of salt water acts like an upside down version of smoke or steam pollution. After time these slightly more dense solutions will settle on the bottom of the tank much like a layer of smog can lay at a fixed altitude over a city.

 In the photo below the red layer is a medium density salt water mixture that settled into the bottom of the tank like a layer of pollution. The blue mixture is even more dense and as it billows upwards into the atmosphere (or down into the water tank) it being slightly more dense than the red layer it will settle as a more dense layer below the red layer. Never expected my lab photos to turn out looking so artistic.

Leaky Engineering Pipeline

You ask managers why they have problems recruiting women they will probably tell you things like well, women just choose to go into other fields. Or they like more fulfilling careers helping people and don't like working with machines. Ask those managers why they have problems retaining women they'll probably tell you because all those women keep having babies and leaving the workplace. My own manager in the same breath as promising to finally help me out here (see me whine about my salary here with a colorful graph to illustrate) asked whether he'd have to worry about me taking a "baby leave" anytime soon. I should have turned the question around as he is equally married, only a few years older than me, and just as likely to produce spawn himself. Instead I just took some Fukitol and shut my mouth. Turns out plenty of other women working in engineering might be taking the same drug.

 

A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee nearly half of women who leave engineering leave due to the environment and working conditions. Only one in four who left did so to spend more time with family. How many never enter engineering? I know a female student who is graduating and may or may not enter the field. Nothing to do with babies either. According to the study, one third of women who graduate with an engineering degree but don't enter the field do so because of their perceptions about the field being inflexible and having a culture non-supportive of women. Listen to this chilling account from the article:

"Engineering school was pure hell for me," one survey respondent wrote. "My personality inspired much sexist behavior from my male classmates and my teaching assistants. At some point, after many interviews, I decided that I wouldn't want to spend the majority of my waking hours with the type of people interviewing me."

Holy crap. I'm happy to report no discrimination in my university experience. Or at least, none that I witnessed personally or can remember. But it could be my experience is not typical. And it's disappointing to me the cold shower of disappointment that hit after I entered the industry is actually getting to people before they even start working and discouraging them to enter the field. So what about the women who leave after they get started in the field?

Women engineers who were treated in a condescending, patronizing manner, and were belittled and undermined by their supervisors and co-workers, were most likely to want to leave their organizations, according to the study.

Long working hours, unclear work objectives and a lack of company planning also drove women to leave the field.

...

"This study touched a nerve with so many women," Fouad said. "Those who stay in the field differ in that they have supportive supervisors and co-workers, and they have very clear perceptions of their jobs and how they can advance in the field."

Total shock that women probably want the same things from their jobs that men want. We are not all baby making machines ready to leave once the 'mones kick in. Asking too much not to be belittled or undermined in the job, having some vague idea about what your job purpose is, and knowing how to move up? I know you're thinking, "Hey FrauTech, I'm a dude, and I have these same concerns!" You're right sir!

Men could have the same complaints, but they haven't left the field as often.

...

Many companies have struggled with employee retention.

"There are probably quite a few male engineers who aren't necessarily thrilled with the workplace climate," said Charlene Yauch, Industrial Engineering program director and associate professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

...

It also says companies should have zero tolerance for bad behavior.

"We hope to reach out to men as well," Fouad said about another study she wants to do.

It's kind of sad that for this kind of thing to get traction means they have to "reach out" to men. Like we're two different species. I tend to agree with the statement in the article that states that engineering universities should "give women a more realistic preview of engineering tasks and workplace cultures." But I don't think that's a women only problem. And much as the macho/top-dog/kill yourself working culture hurts women it hurts men too. Only the other societal pressures on men are probably not as heavy as they are on women, hence why women leave the industry more often. But that doesn't mean fixing the workplace culture wouldn't benefit everyone. And it means it's not some crazy niche idea for women only.

But the numbers for women have stayed pretty flat: "Women comprise more than 20% of engineering school graduates, but only 11% of practicing engineers are female, according to the National Science Foundation." I hate to think how much talent we lose when we ignore the low numbers of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering. Or the creativity and innovation we're throwing away when we stick to models of "good old boys" that hurt everyone, women, minorities, even white guys. I guess we need to "reach out" to those white guys to get them to buy into this idea that the system isn't working for them either. And that by working together we can make it better.

More on STEM recruiting

In BusinessWeek Sophie Vandebroek writes about why the US must promote engineering. She doesn't really do a good job at saying why though and I think her article is more of a how. She doesn't say why the US would be better off with more engineers or with discouraging fewer people from staying away from the field. And while I agree with her general premise, some of her points seem too out of line for me to ignore.

First, kids should experience early on how much fun science is. In my family, we encouraged our children to treat the world as their laboratory. As my now-22-year-old engineer daughter, Nena, can attest, she and her brothers watched minimal television throughout elementary and middle school, so they were left to find more creative ways to spend their time. Their afternoons regularly involved digging for bugs, building furniture for their fort, and constructing makeshift dams across the sidewalk after rainstorms.

Great that she didn't let her kids watch TV but she fails to realize that her own background (she's the CTO at Xerox) enabled her to give those lessons to her children. Being an engineer is a decidedly middle class, sometimes upper class, career. It's true that technicians, and mechanics and carpenters and many blue collar workers do excellent jobs at convincing their kids to go to school for engineering but many more parents don't convey that message. Not because they're too good for it, but because just as many kids don't know what an engineer does many adults don't either. And if you grew up and your parents were nurses or secretaries you may not know anything about engineering. I like getting parents involved, but it's not people working in STEM already whose kids we need to reach. It's the kids who no one bothers to tell them what an engineer does or why they might like it.

 

Second of all, my sister and I (though we watched TV) had a similarly creative upbringing. But we didn't spend hours building dirt forts, rather we spent hours writing creative stories or writing computer programs. Not everyone's path to engineering is the same and I think the implication that all kids need to build stuff when not every engineering career is even remotely like that is a rather closed minded way of recruiting kids. If you like programming, or like solving problems, or like writing reports it doesn't mean you shouldn't go into engineering because all these skills are in the field as well.

 

The author also talks about expanding green cards and trying to encourage immigrants to stay here after college rather than going back home. But I have to disagree with her there. It's good to have a flexible immigration policy that allows for new people and new ideas but with our economy still bleeding jobs and with the great many engineers out of work I know I'd rather focus on recruiting underrepresented minorities into the field instead of foreigners.

 

Over at Under the Microscope they talk about a program to recruit girls into engineering, Spark Talented Minority Girls' Interest in Engineering, Female Recruits Explore Engineering (FREE). A mouthful I know. Funded by the NSF the program follows and guides young women from high school, through college, and into their career.

The FREE project focus group included mostly minority girls from Ohio, Colorado, and Iowa from the following additional demographics: most came from low socioeconomic backgrounds; all were recruited through their schools; all were girls who were strong academically in both math and science; none had family members or extended family members that were engineers (to ensure few preconceived notions of engineering); none had decided with any level of certainty on one field; and all of the girls agreed to simply explore engineering as an option.

I really like how we're showing engineering to people even if they don't choose it as a career. I would love for more professionals to just know about what engineering is not necessarily that everyone needs to pursue it. In this case they were doing a study on these girls so hence their goals of not choosing girls who had family members who were engineers, but I think that goal is fantastic. Not that girls and minorities who are related to engineers don't need the help and guidance, but clearly that's not the demographic we're having trouble reaching. I think perhaps that's a noble goal for outreach programs to target only people who would not otherwise participate.

Emails I'd like to write

Dear Important Douchebag,

 

You might remember me, I've done a lot of the work that you and members of your group have passed off in communications to the customer as being your own work. I was a bit surprised when a customer contact looking for information came back to little old me. Because it seems like you sent them some instructions to use a piece of equipment provided by us and failed to indicate the part number or anything specific about that equipment. Then when you tell me it was a piece "made by engineering" I really have to wonder. Because I work in engineering and what we typical do here is put a fucking part number or name on something. We don't just make something and send it off to fairy land with nothing telling you what the hell it is or what you're supposed to use it on.

 

So when you calmly tell me there's no fucking part number I really have to wonder who's driving this thing and why some total fucking douchebag like you gets to take constant credit for my analysis and reports and then sends the customer a fucking instruction to use a fucking part that they have no fucking idea what it is. I'd really like your job because it probably pays 3-4x what I make and I wouldn't have to use my fucking brain which sounds great.

 

No fucking thanks to you asshole,

 

Your Mechanical Engineer

On which I rant with my ladybrain

My colleague over at Engineer Blogs wrote a great post on women in engineering. This is one of those cases where the internet both nurtures me and discourages me. It's nice to know there are dudes out there who respect me as a colleague and engineer first. It's nice to know there are guys who think society is largely responsible for the different career tracts men and women take. Before I graduated college I worked in the health care industry part time. And I really had no idea that there were still men out there who felt women were any less capable or intelligent.

 

But then I met so many excellent women on the internet who had the same experiences I did it was pure joy not to feel so alone. So this is just another rant about all the bullsh#$ floating around on the net and in my life and if you don't like it you don't have to read it.

 

The dudes on the reddit comments for Fluxor's article talk a lot about how women get all the jobs. That there are all these "big companies" out there who have to hire women to fill their diversity quota. Where are these companies? Perhaps someone could point me in the right direction? I'm job hunting in engineering with significantly more real world experience than my peers while applying for the same level of jobs. And yet, no bites so far. It would be interesting to know how many of my peers have job offers and whether that's overwhelmingly in favor of the perhaps 15-20% of women. But I can rant on what I do know.

 

In the last n+3 years my department went from having 0 female engineers to then 2, then it lost one, hired another one to bring it back up to 2, lost one, and hired back the one who left initially to push us back up to 2. In recent days we've swarmed to a whopping 4, three of whom are young early 20s and the other perhaps late 30s early 40s. These 4 people make up approximately 4.8% of the department's engineers. That's well below the national average of female mechanical engineers being something closer to 10%. One supervisor once told me until he hired his first female engineer that was the first resume he'd ever received from a woman. I don't know if that's true or not. With, as I said before, 15-20% of the engineers at my school being female one has to wonder why they either wouldn't be applying or would be getting screened out of even entry level positions.

 

And check this sh@# out, female engineers still earn less than their male counterparts. Glassdoor looked at female and male salaries based on years of experience alone. Looking at the bottom end you wouldn't expect "choices" about childrearing to have any affect on this. And yet, women compared with equally qualified men in the 0-3 years of experience range earn 97% the salary of their male colleages. Once you get into the 4-6 year experience category that gap widens to women earning 91%. Now I'd like to make some conclusions based on the women I know in the workforce but unlike the commenters on reddit, or many of my colleagues, I prefer not to draw conclusions from 4-5 people. When I've known perhaps several hundred engineers where 4-5 of whom are women it would be pretty idiotic to draw conclusions about their capabilities "as women" their relative ease or difficulty in career advancement or ridiculously unrelated things like their perceived level of attractiveness. I'll end this post with some quotes heard in the workplace and in all cases said to my face (not "shop talk" or "locker room talk").

 

Why isn't this organized? You should organize this, women are supposed to be good at organizing.

 

Could you go over to the shop and bat your eyelashes and make friends so we can get these parts done?

 

Did you know that so-and-so slept with her boss to get her job? She also slept with DudeA and DudeB. (All not true, but all none of his business regardless)

 

Well I had to give DudeX a raise, he has a family to support.

 

Who do you think is good for this role? Oh? Why would I promote her, she's preganant, right? So we're just going to lose her anyways. No, we'll find someone else. (She came back after the pregnancy and still works there).

 

What? That applicant didn't tell me she'd just had a kid. Can't believe she hid that one this whole time through the whole interview process.

 

I'm not sure why we're hiring another woman.

 

Stop disagreeing with me on this (engineering related discussion) I get enough backtalk at home.

 

Oh I see you're dressed like a lady today, that's a change. (wore a skirt, my bad)

 

Why are you working while in school, aren't you married?

 

And much, much more! Here's to me getting a job elsewhere as at the very least I'll have access to more data. And more data is always better.

Can college teach critical thinking?

Two sociologists wrote a book from a four year study that followed 2,300 students at 24 universities and tried to see what they actually learned. What they found was, in general, college students did not improve on critical thinking and writing skills. They blame a lack of "rigor" in university schoolwork and a system of student evaluations that pressures professors to assign less and less work. Students in liberal arts disciplines did slightly better than students in business or communications.

 

I first read about this over at Historiann's with a longer article on the study here and was reminded about this when one of the authors did an interview on NPR this morning. There's also an article on discussion on this topic over at Higher Education.

 

Personally I feel so much of it is a kids these days kind of attitude. It's in the ruling elite's best interest to prove that today's college students just didn't learn as much or as well as they did back in the day. But what with cutting funding over the last 30 years to public education institutions it's no surprise to me something would suffer as a result. But how about critical thinking or writing? Never once I have seen that directly asked in a job application or been able to deduce that an interviewer was actually looking for it. Especially in engineering there is a tendency to ask what products the person worked with, what kind of designs they can generate, their hardware and software skills. Back in my humanities days I wrote a lot. We had an excellent writing program in my high school which was topped off with a very specific writing program in college. Almost all my humanities classes required papers, easily hitting the 20 pages they discuss in that article. In engineering there was writing, but it wasn't as consistent. There was writing in early introduction and design courses, then again at the end in the senior level classes. But inbetween it's mostly problem solving. The occasional use of a CAD program or a few classes covering software programming whether in C or matlab were the only real take home assignments.

 

And why not? I write better than many of the young engineers I work with. But my writing skills have never come into play with my employers. I have a whole degree that covered writing, analyzing, critical thinking and other "soft" skills. Instead they ask what CAD program I've used, and for how many years, and did I use this other analysis programs? They ask what kind of hardware I've designed or tested looking for application specific knowledge. I think there's an assumption amongst employers that "soft" skills like writing can come in time whereas technical skills they really want new employees to have right away. I think this might be flawed, but it represents the system as it is. A good [designer] can learn to write whereas a good writer can never learn to [design], substitute in whatever the desired technical skill is.

 

But employers like to complain that college grads are not qualified period. That even in this economy they can't get qualified people to hire. Often this is attributed to a back in my day we used to kind of attitude with an assumption that whatever skills that manager learned in school 20 years ago are superior to whatever skills the student is learning now. I'm not saying the bar hasn't lowered for higher education. But a student graduating now is expected to have all the technical knowledge of an engineering degree, with the hands on knowledge of a shop, as well as software skills with programming, CAD, matlab, ANSYS, etc. They're also supposed to be pretty competent with MS Word, Excel and Project. Oh and they want specific application experience. I mean how can they expect to have this memorization and working knowledge combination and come out with a student who can think independently or apply the facts they've spent the last 20 years learning? I think new college grads will never be good enough for employers or for sociologists alike.

 

So much of what makes you who you are and what makes you good at what you do you learn on the job. This holds true for technical skills, application specific knowledge, and tribal knowledge. So why can't it hold true for critical thinking? If we aknowledge technical skills can be learned on the job, why not soft skills? We may not value it as highly but it seems like our employees could improve in many ways and we should stop expecting so much for an education system we've stopped adequately funding.

Engineering Ethics

How do you properly teach ethics in engineering (or for that matter any other discipline) in class? In my experience it gets lumped in with some more report-focused class taught as a few mandatory lectures. It's important, but I'm not sure it's always conveyed very well.

 

Students have seen the same Tacoma Narrows bridge, Challenger explosion, Columbia burnout over and over again. I suspect the Apollo 1 fire was featured more prominently in engineering ethics courses not so many years ago, but now it fades into old news. And the students in these classes are no longer old enough to remember the Challenger. They were probably in middle school or high school when the Columbia tried to re-enter earth's atmosphere. Two years after 9-11, and 17 years after Challenger, I can't help but think this didn't have the same impact that previous disasters did.

 

And college students are notoriously unresponsible immature assholes. I don't like the ethics lectures because when we watch a video on the Columbia taking off and it fades away I hear a few "boom"s from the lecture hall. When somebody comes on to talk about it they snicker at his 1980s mustache. This is a cartoon for them. They're not taking the loss of life any more seriously than they're capable of taking anything else. Sure, maybe some of it is a nervous humor, an attempt to not have to take it seriously. Because that might be too real. But these are America's future engineers.

 

I think my age both in Challenger having a greater impact on the lives of those around me as well as being past the point of making jokes in lecture is what separates me from the vocal minority in these cases. But I try to think about the lecturer and what I would do in his case to try to get through to these students. Mandatory ethics lectures are irritating to many people, myself included. We all have places we'd rather be and other responsibilities in our life. But a brief discussion and a thirty minute video doesn't seem to be reaching these people. I feel like only in remembering these tragedies and especially remembering the pain and terrible loss of life can we hope to do better in the future.

Blogging about STEM

With all this talk about women science bloggers a few have been mentioning a problem. That it seems as if women who blog about science do not get the same attention/audience that men who blog about science. And that women who may start off blogging about science will eventually be compelled to blog about women in science. So I was curious where I stood on the balance.

 

From the pie chart (mmmmpie) I'm actually surprised how much engineering fills up my posts. Of course this is post only, not based on reaction/audience. And I'm surprised how little bitching about work is in there. The women thing I did not foresee when I started blogging but it's something I have strong opinions about so it doesn't bother me it's part of the balance. Clearly I'm not blogging about my cat enough.

 

If any readers/commenters would like to pipe up with suggestions or what they'd like to see more/less of, go right ahead! Like I told my professor today in lecture after he criticized my design and then pseudo-apologized, go ahead, I can take it!

Wimminz in STEM

A lot of brilliant and smart people have been speaking their minds lately about "women science bloggers" post Science Online 2011 and some other traffic. There's too many to hit all the great responses, but here's a list anyways:

Even when we want something we need to hide it - Kate Clancy

Self Promotion Tour 2011 - Dr Becca

Women and Science Blogging - Daniel Lende

Where are the female science bloggers? - scicurious

It brings up a lot of things Cherish the Scientist and I have been thinking about as we go forward with our new blogging collective EngineerBlogs (am I plugging this enough? GO THERE AND READ! ADD OUR FEED!). How do you make sure you are achieving diversity and looking beyond the people like you tendency we all have. I mean, it's easier for me, I'm a female blogger so naturally I'll gravitate towards other female bloggers. So how do you convince other people that intentionally recruiting for diversity is a good thing? I like Tenured Radical's post on affirmative action and the idea that merit is actually a system, or even better, the myth of merit. The idea that certain groups don't have distinct advantages from an early age or that our tendency to befriend, to recruit, and to reward people who are more like ourselves doesn't come into play with a historically white/male dominated world. This might be less obvious on the blogosphere, but it's certainly no less obvious in my life. Zuska also wrote a great and succinct post as well on the whole I want to earn this on my own when none of us really accomplish anything purely on our own merit.

It looks like they'll be hiring another female engineer here. The holdup now is she is supposedly "asking for too much" and negotations are occurring. I applaud her for asking for too much. And I wonder if a guy with similar education and experience who had asked for that much would have been categorized in the same way. No way of knowing really, I'm not that involved with the hiring process. Hiring her will bring the department representation of female engineers from 2.7% to 3.3%.

She's replacing a woman who left a while ago to teach. Sometimes I think because the last woman was so successful the people in charge thought let's hire someone like her and that's the only reason we're getting another woman. That if the last person had been a man, and good at his job, it would have been a man like him we'd be bringing in. Due to the other woman's leaving to pursue an alternate career (leaky pipeline? too limited sample size) she was asked somewhere in the offer stage whether there was anything she wanted to disclose, anything that might take her away from here. She mentioned then that she had just had a kid.

One of the people that interviewed her balked that she hadn't told him that, that throughout the multiple interviews she had failed to mention that. Clearly she should have said nothing. Sure, mentioning a pregnancy or future birth of a child might be appropriate by the presence of already born children certainly shouldn't be. She was already holding down a job, clearly she had it worked out. Not to mention the person who balked at it has a grown kid and presumably worked at some point in his career with a child just born. Or not to mention other higher level people in the group have little kids at home. We are reminded it is only a factor for women.

Some of my colleagues are dreading her being brought on and worrying whether she will be demanding or a tyrant of those she works with. But I'm not worried. I'm not one of those women who thinks it's hard to work with other women. I can't say every woman I've ever worked with has been my ally but many have and I've had fantastic peers and mentors that were both men and women. All the women I've worked for and with have had the same spectrum of the men I've worked for. I've yet to work under a real tyrant of a boss, but the ones I know about are all men. I suspect though that's an institutional thing and that the men in charge just wouldn't tolerate a dictator in the form of a woman, they'd make sure to encourage her out of the organization.

I look forward to meeting the new engineer. I hope we will get along and secretly I will try to help her and encourage her, even as the underling I am, as I have tried to do so for other women, minorities, and talented employees who I feel don't get the support they should for whatever category management thinks they don't fit into. Sometimes the things I hear or when I am called a bitch or labelled or put into a box makes it feel like death by a thousand cuts and I feel like giving up. But sometimes I feel like I'm a secret agent and my mission is to seek out these people and help them in whatever little ways I can. Maybe my little contributions will make up for the thousand cuts.